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Connor Passe

Travel By Rail

Japan

11–20 December 2019 · Kansai Airport to Narita, by way of Kōyasan, Hiroshima and Kyoto

Ten days crossing Japan by train with friends, the Japan half of a trip through Thailand and Japan at the end of my semester in Sydney. I landed at Kansai on the overnight flight from Bangkok and spent the first day eating through Osaka: Kuromon Market, Dōtonbori, and the winter illuminations at Osaka Castle. The next afternoon I took the Nankai line and cable car up to Kōyasan, the mountain center of Shingon Buddhism. I spent the night in a temple lodging and walked into the lantern-lit Okunoin cemetery after dark. The next morning was morning prayer and the Danjō Garan, then back down to Osaka to activate the JR Pass and catch the Shinkansen to Hiroshima for an evening at the Peace Memorial Park. The next day was the ferry to Miyajima and the floating torii of Itsukushima Shrine, then an evening Shinkansen to Kyoto. Kyoto meant a hike from Kifune Shrine over Mt. Kurama, then the Golden Pavilion at Kinkaku-ji, a traditional tea ceremony, and Fushimi Inari’s torii tunnels at dusk. Then the Shinkansen to Tokyo: Sensō-ji in Asakusa, Akihabara, teamLab Borderless in Odaiba, and Shinjuku nights. I flew home from Narita on 20 December.

Rail pass · By Rail

Three Shinkansen on a seven-day JR Pass, with friends

  • 10 days
  • 6 places
  • ~1,240 km by Shinkansen
  • 1 night in a temple
  • 19 sites

The chart

A chart of the route. Each stop on it is a button that reads out its day, time and note, and the same stops and rides are listed day by day after it.

Day by day

    • Kansai Airport → Namba Landed at KIX 8:30 AM on the overnight VietJet flight from Bangkok via Ho Chi Minh City.
    • Shinsaibashi / Amerika-mura 09:50 approx. First stop after landing.
    • Kuromon Ichiba Market 13:00–13:30 Street-food market (takoyaki, seafood).
    • Dōtonbori 14:10 Canal-side food and neon district.
    • Osaka Castle (Nishinomaru Garden illuminations) 17:40–17:50 Winter light-up at the castle grounds.
    • Namba → Kōyasan (Nankai Kōya Line) Nankai Kōya Line to Gokurakubashi, then the cable car and bus up the mountain. Not covered by the JR Pass.
    • Kōyasan, temple lodging (shukubō) 17:10 approx. Overnight in a Buddhist temple lodging on the sacred mountain (the lodging's name isn't in the plan doc).
    • Okunoin (Ichinohashi entrance) 18:20 Evening walk into the vast forest cemetery around Kōbō Daishi's mausoleum.
    • Danjō Garan (Konpon Daitō) 08:50 Morning at the central temple complex after morning prayer at the lodging.
    • Kongōbu-ji area 09:40 approx. Head temple of Shingon Buddhism.
    • Kōyasan → Namba
    • Namba → Shin-Osaka JR Passes activated in Osaka (7 days).
    • Shin-Osaka → Hiroshima (Sanyō Shinkansen)
    • Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park & Atomic Bomb Dome 18:00 Evening at the memorials, a short walk from the hotel.
    • Small Hotel Hondori Shopping Arcade approx. 1-5-13 Otemachi, Naka Ward; near the A-Bomb Dome.
    • Hiroshima → Miyajimaguchi (JR Sanyō Line)
    • Miyajimaguchi ⇄ Miyajima (JR ferry) Round trip.
    • Itsukushima Shrine, Miyajima 12:00–12:50 The 'floating' torii gate; lunch on Omotesandō street.
    • Miyajimaguchi → Hiroshima
    • Hiroshima → Kyoto (Sanyō / Tōkaidō Shinkansen) Evening train; arrived late in Kyoto.
    • Kyoto → Kibune / Kurama (Eizan Railway) Day trip; hiked from Kibune over Mt. Kurama to Kurama-dera, then back by train.
    • Kifune Shrine, Kibune 12:20–12:30 Mountain shrine in the Kibune valley.
    • Kibune → Mt. Kurama → Kurama-dera
    • Kurama-dera, Mt. Kurama 13:30–13:40 End of the hike over Mt. Kurama from Kibune.
    • Kurama → Kyoto
    • Kinkaku-ji (Golden Pavilion) 12:40–13:00 Probably by bike: a shared 'Kyoto bike route' map was made the night before.
    • Traditional tea ceremony 15:30 approx. Booked in advance for 3:30 PM. The pin is the first photo afterward (4:30 PM), not the tea house itself.
    • Fushimi Inari-taisha 17:00–18:10 Up through the thousands of vermilion torii gates at dusk.
    • Kyoto → Tokyo (Tōkaidō Shinkansen) Morning departure, arrived around 2 PM.
    • Shinjuku 18:20 approx. First evening in Tokyo.
    • Sensō-ji, Asakusa 11:30 Tokyo's oldest temple and neighborhood.
    • Akihabara 12:20 Electric Town; the plan was brunch at a maid café here.
    • Shimbashi / Shiodome 14:00 approx. Single photo, midday.
    • teamLab Borderless, Odaiba 17:30–17:40 Digital art museum (at its original Odaiba location, closed in 2022).
    • Robot Restaurant, Shinjuku 20:30 planned Tickets were bought ahead; no geotagged photos this day, so this is from the plan, not confirmed.
    • Tokyo → Narita Airport Flew NRT → LAX, 6:30 PM.
    • Narita Airport → Los Angeles Flew NRT → LAX at 6:30 PM, ending the Asia trip.

Key to the chart

  • Shinkansen
  • JR and local lines
  • Private line and cable car
  • Subway and airport trains
  • Ferry
  • On foot
  • The train
  • Neighborhood
  • Food
  • Landmark
  • Temple or shrine
  • Memorial
  • Museum
  • Experience
  • Show
  • Where I slept
  • Airport
  • Approximate position
  • Planned, with no photo to confirm it

Each day’s plan comes from the trip doc we shared, the flights and the bookings from email, and where I actually was, and when, from about 70 geotagged photos: that is how teamLab turns out to have been on 18 December, not the 17th as planned. A stop the photos place only roughly says approx., and the Robot Restaurant, on the one day with no photos, is from the plan and drawn hollow. Each line follows the track it ran on, from station to station, as OpenStreetMap maps it; how I got from Kyoto Station to the Eizan line is not recorded, so that stretch takes the usual trains. The Shinkansen’s 1,240 km are the lines’ fare distances; the track itself is a little shorter.